he had come home with such high, bright hopes, to be loved and to be in
a world he understood.
As he got down from the cart, he stared at his property with a mounting
sense of unease. He'd been away only six months, but there was an
atmosphere of disrepair and neglect about the place. He saw the distant
figures picking cotton, but only half the number there should have been,
and there were still acres to be picked before the rain came.
Then Lizzie, dressed as a field hand, ran screaming into his arms, and
clutched him, and wept, and blurted out the news of the death of his
daughters. He hardly knew how to respond, for it was too shocking and
unexpected and the enormity of what had happened was too great for him
to assimilate.
He took his wife and son to the big house, sat with them
QUEEN 503
in the kitchen, and said very little while he heard the stories of their
deprivation in his absence. He wished they'd stop, because he wanted to
be alone, but could not be yet, because he was husband and father.
Then Cap'n Jack burst in, and told him that Easter was dying.
Without saying a word, Jass got up from the table, left the room, left
the house, and walked, faster and faster, to the one place in the world
that was constant to him, and was not constant anymore.
He heard Lizzie call after him. "This is your family!" She sounded angry,
but he didn't care.
He shivered with fear as he walked. He could see it now, nestling in the
trees as it always had, the cottage of his dreams, and he began to run,
as he ran to it once, so many years ago, on the night his father died.
She had been there then, waiting for him, as she always waited for him,
and she had to be there now, because she was always there.
But just as he started to run, he heard an awful scream from inside the
house, and he stopped running, for he understood what the dreadful sound
meant, and his blood ran cold.
He came into the weaving house and saw what he had known he would see.
Easter was lying on the bed, her eyes closed in death.
Queen -was beside her, sobbing, and clinging to her mother, as if to drag
her back from her new dominion, and Sally was comforting Queen.
He hadn't spoken, had hardly made a sound when he came in, but somehow
Queen knew he was there. She ran to him, threw herself at his feet and
clutched at his legs, begging him to bring her mammy back, to make
everything all right again.
He saw what she did and heard what she said, but without seeing and
without hewing. The only thing he could see was the awful image of
Easter, and then his mind exploded, and refused to accept what his eyes
saw. He turned his head away, so that he wouldn't have to look at her.
Sally came to Queen and pulled her from her father, the Massa.
"Come, girl, come," she said. "Save your grief till later. We must 'get
a winding sheet."
504 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN
Just once, Jass looked at Queen, and that once was almost enough, for she
saw the unbearable grief in his eyes, and a pain, and a loneliness, more
intense than her own. She allowed Sally to pull her away, and left her
father alone with her mother.
He didn't look at her, and he didn't go to her, because there was no point.
She was not there.
He sat in his old rocking chair, and stared at nothing. Waiting. If he did
what he had always done, sat and waited for her, then she would come back
from the well, and sit at her loom, and they'd be together again, nothing
could keep them apart, and everything would be as it had always been.
He sat for hours, seeing her dance in his mind, a living and beautiful
thing, who had taken possession of his heart at some time before he could
remember, and had nursed and cherished him through all his life.
He didn't move or speak. Night came, and still he sat there. Then, without
understanding how it happened, he knew she wasn't going to come back from
the well, ever again. He knew he would never see her, living, again, and
prayed that her soul was in some sweet and gentle resting place.
For a great and simple truth had overwhelmed him. He had known it for so
long, all his thinking life; perhaps he had put it out of his mind because
it made the world too complicated. The implications of it now were so
frightening, he could not, at this moment, bear to consider them.
Black people did have souls.
He turned and looked at the body.
"Oh, my love," he said.
And he wept.
58
it was as if someone had turned out a lamp in Queen's heart, or God had
snatched the sun away. Although the awful truth of Easter's death had burst
into her soul at the moment of her mammy's going, Queen understood that it
was to a place she could not follow, and disbelief fought with knowledge. A
tiny part of her nursed, cherished, the idea that her mammy was only resting
somewhere, and would come to her again, but the greater part knew Easter's
loving embrace was gone forever, and she was filled with an unassuageable
sense of loss. Anger battled with despair, and loneliness was the champion.
Under Sally's careful instruction, she had gone about the necessary
business, and had sat outside the weaving house for hours waiting till Jass
had finished whatever it was he still had to do with her mother, clutching
the winding sheet to her, and keening softly. When Jass left the weaving
house late that night, Queen went in, and kissed and caressed her dead
mother, and wept her distress. Then, refusing Cap'n Jack or Sally's help,
she had washed Easter's body, gently as a daughter should, and made her hair
pretty, and wrapped her in the winding sheet.
As she tended the body, unanswerable questions assailed her, of which the
greatest concerned Jass, for now he was her nearest living relative, apart
from Cap'n Jack, and the living link of love with her mother. For she knew
it must have been love, and knew it was a love that fell outside the
parameters of conventional domesticity. As a slave, it was not strange to
her that Easter so willingly accepted the limits that their society imposed
on their relationship, and to have had the small proofs she did of the
Massa's love was a treasure sweeter to Queen than any she could imagine. It
was what she wanted now, some word, some look, and, most wondrous of all,
an
505
506 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN
embrace, from her father, but it never came. Apart from that one, tiny,
anguished look that Jass had given Queen, when she had thought she had
seen into his soul, Jass ignored her, and this added to Queen's sense of
bereavement. She had thought that he loved her, but now, in her time of
greatest need, his reassurance did not come. Cap'n Jack was kind to her,
and Sally, but they could not fill the void in her heart. On the night
that Easter was buried, Queen could not sleep. Comfortable and warm in
her
tiny cot, she could not bear to think of Easter lying in the wet, cold
earth, eaten by worms. It was Sally who was able to persuade her that the
ground would be kind to her mother, and cherish her mortal remains while
her spirit found a greater comfort.
Jass was not thoughtless of Queen, nor did he intend to hurt. It was
simply that he was trying to find a way to cope with his own grief, his
own loneliness, and to avoid considerations of his world turned upside.
He longed to fight for his country, but he no longer believed in the cause
his country fought for. Jass now believed that slavery must end one day,
for the forces of the world and his own heart were against it, but he
could not let his country be vanquished by his brothers. Queen was the
physical embodiment of the contradictions that raged within him. Restless
and dispirited, he spent most of his days in Florence, anxious for news
of the war, and getting drunk with men who were too old to fight, and boys
who were too young. He was bitter because he had been forced back into
idleness, while good men, friends, were dying.
Neither side appeared to be winning, and the list of the dead was growing
daily. Almost everyone who came to The Forks had a friend or cousin or
brother or son who had paid the ultimate sacrifice.
It was winter. Barren, inanimate winter. The trees were lifeless and bare.
The slave graveyard, so prettily situated in the other seasons, was
desolate now. It suited Queen's mood, for the weeks had not eased her
sense of loss. A simple wooden cross marked Easter's grave, among so many
dead. Next to her lay Julie, who had gone so very recently, and Ephraim
who had also died of the fever. Not far away was Solomon, who had
QUEEN 507
escaped from The Forks of Cypress once, and been recaptured and brought
back, and never ceased to bore them with the tall tales of his freedom. Over
yonder was Tiara, who had helped Queen to be born, and had been kind to her
when she was little. She was gone soon after Queen moved into the big house,
and lay beside her husband, Micah, in perfect peace.
Queen came here almost every day, to tend the grave and keep it neat and
clean. And to talk to her mammy, who was, to her, still a living creature,
safe, in God's comforting arms. Jass's return had not made everything all
right again; if anything, their physical circumstances were worse. The war,
which everyone had thought would be over in a few short months, dragged on.
Food was scarce; all they had was what the farm could provide. It would
soon be Christmas, but no one could find any reason for cheer.
Queen, wrapped in a blanket to keep her warm, sat by her mother's grave and
told her these things. She was cold and lonely, she worked too hard, and no
one ever seemed grateful for all the things she did; they accepted them as
if it were her place to care for them, and demanded as much from her as she
could give, and then demanded more. To them she was a slave, she knew, and
it was her duty to slave for them, but Queen could not accept that she was
only a slave. No one understood that Queen looked after them all because
they were her family.
If only she weren't so tired all the time. If only her mammy were here,
with her, to help.
"I miss you, Mammy," she whispered, too exhausted even to cry.
She sat for a while and pulled a few old weeds from the grave. Not many,
because it was winter, and not even weeds grew in winter.
She became aware that she was not alone. Someone else was standing in the
trees near her, watching her.
It was Jass. 4
Wearily, Queen dragged herself to her feet.
"I sorry, Massa," she said, knowing her place.
He shrugged his shoulders. Place didn't matter very much, here. Neither of
them said anything because they couldn't think of anything to say. Gossip
was irrelevant, sacrilegious here, and all the news was bad.
508 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN
But the silence was awkward. More than Massa and slave, they were not as
much as father and daughter. Yet he had to speak to her. If her loss was
as keen as his own, could they not find some little comfort from each
other?
"Do you come here often?" Jass asked, and Queen nodded.
"You work very hard," Jass said. "Thank you."
Queen closed her eyes, and felt warm again. At least the Massa understood
how hard she worked. At least her father had said thank you.
"I'm sorry we're not more help to you," Jass said, and it was Queen's
turn to shrug.
"Not your place, Massa," she told him. She did not understand his mood.
He was here with them, safe from the war.
"Sometimes I wonder where my place is," he said, and his bitterness
confused her.
Why did he hate himself so? Queen wanted to go to him, hold him, tell him
they loved him. Tell him that she loved him. She didn't, because she
didn't know how. No one had ever taught her. She wondered if her mammy
had ever told him how much she had loved him. Or he her.
She turned away, unable to cope with his bleak, winter mood, but her need
for him was too strong. She turned back, but he was gone.
Jass walked down the hill from the slave graveyard. He had wanted to be
there alone, to sit and talk with Easter for a while, but Queen was there,
and he felt guilty at disturbing her. The child had so little; he could
not take away what little she had. He had found no comfort from her;
rather her evident sense of pain had increased his own. Thoughts of death
and dying filled him. The family cemetery was at the bottom of the hill,
and he went to it, and stood at the graves of his daughters. Cap'n Jack
had said they died easy, but that wasn't true. No one died easy.
He yearned to be away at the war. He wasn't sure what the cause was
anymore, except the protection of his place and his family, and they had
to be protected. He tried to block his mind to the matter of slavery,
because to deny the rightness of it was to deny the South, and everything
Jass understood himself to be. What was important was the South, not for
the
QUEEN 509
maintenance of slavery but for its sheer survival. Militarily, the South
seemed to have a small advantage; at any rate, they had not lost. Perhaps
the North had originally underestimated the skill and ferociousness of
their enemy. Perhaps they had misunderstood the whole rationale of the
war. The South was fighting for its very existence; the North was fighting
only to win. But the North had the resources to assemble a vast war
machine, Jass knew, and when that was in place the possibility of a
Southern victory required every possible man.
One of those men was Jass. Discharged from the army but determined to
fight, he had talked with his brother William, who had presented a
solution. William, a Confederate state senator, knew all the ins and outs
of political intrigue. He in
tended to raise a company, the Franklin
Rifles, and would pay for their uniforms. He would present his company
to the army command; it would be accepted into service and William given
a commission considered appropriate.
There was no reason why Jass could not do the same. He could afford to
do so, and the army would infinitely prefer to have his troops under its
command than roaming renegade free.
He told them at dinner, and Lizzie was predictably angry. As usual,
Parson Dick was listening in the pantry, and relayed the news to Queen
in the kitchen.
"Miss Lizzie don't like it," he said.
"Miss Lizzie don't like nothing," Queen sniffed, busy with the meal. "Set
them taters out for me, Poppy," she called to her unwilling assistant.
"And you get that meat out to them, Parson Dick, you hear?"
"Not much point. Nobody's eatin', 'cept young Massa William." Parson Dick
was enjoying the row in the dining room.
Queen didn't want her father to go, and was as angry as Lizzie. She
banged a pot on the stove. "Ain't none of our business," she snapped. "We
cook it an' serve it. lf'n they eat it or not's up to them. "
Parson Dick took the stewed rabbit into the dining room. When he was
gone, Queen's energy deserted her. Why did he have to go? He was wounded,
he had no reason to fight. Why did he want to leave them alone again,
when they needed him here?
510 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN
Lizzie tried so hard to be reasonable, but could not see Jass's point.
He couldn't protect them if he was hundreds of miles away.
"What if the Yankees come?" she said for the umpteenth time. "A handful
of raggedy slaves can't protect us."
Parson Dick bridled at the word "raggedy" but presented the rabbit to
Sally.
"They'll never get this far South," Jass insisted.
"They might," Lizzie countered.
"Then it's up to me to try to stop them!" Jass was angry, and Lizzie and
Sally both knew it was pointless trying to change his mind when he was
this determined.
There was a small silence while Jass fumed and Lizzie sulked. Sally tried
to restore order.
"Well, now, rabbit," she said. "We haven't had meat for a while."
"A scraggy ol' thing Massa William shot this morning," Parson Dick told
her, and winked at William, who, alone of those at the table, was pleased
that his father was going back to war. The fathers of most of his school
friends had gone, and even though William understood that Jass had been
wounded, he wanted a soldier father, especially an officer. He hadn't
understood why Jass enlisted as a private the first time.
Jass assembled and paid for his company, the 27th Alabama Infantry,
offered it to the Confederate Army High Command, and was appointed
lieutenant-colonel. They marched out in January to Fort Donelson, where
they were assigned.
Sally was pleased. Fort Donelson was named after the family of her dear
departed friend, Rachel Jackson, Andrew's wife, and was situated on the
banks of the Cumberland River, near Nashville. Jass would be safe there,
hundreds of miles from the Northern battlefields.
She was wrong.
A vast, unstoppable, blue-clad army appeared, it seemed from nowhere,
from the west, conquering all in its path. Fort Donelson fell to the
forces of General Grant, and Nashville soon after. Jass was taken
prisoner of war.
"Perhaps it is God's will that I do not fight," he told his
QUEEN 511
mother in a rare letter during his incarceration. "At least, He seems to
be doing His level best to keep me from this war."
He prayed for a similar blessing for his family and cursed it for
himself.
59
Young Davy brought them the news first. For days they had expected it, but
when it came it was shocking.
"The Yankees done took Florence," he yelled as he ran up the hill. -01'
Linkun's in there killin' everybody!"